It's time to hibernate

Two days ago I realised it was time to hibernate, something I’ve been doing the last couple of years. This time two years ago  I had already slowed down to the point where exercise was difficult thanks to my heart condition and I was expecting to have my aortic valve replaced before the end of October. In the event that didn't happen until the end of February last year. No pain or discomfort, just a case of being overwhelmed by lethargy.

Alongside it I had my ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which had been diagnosed in May 2015 and led directly to the discovery of the fact that I had managed to live with only two cusps in my aortic heart valve instead of the usual 3, which meant my heart had spent a lifetime working 50% harder. And my lung condition was only found because of an x-ray I had at the QMC on the day after the 2015 General Election and within 21 days I was facing the prospect of being dead in three years, but here I am battling on, although as of yet it doesn't seem much of a fight.

I started doing what I was told by the medics and my open heart surgery marks the first day still in my Filofax diary. I have been more amazed by the experience than overwhelmed. Even looking death in the eye, and it was a dramatic as that, I felt like an observer, never a victim, but that moment passed in hours thanks to the care and support I received whilst in Nottingham City Hospital.

At the beginning of November last year I had my vanity appealed to (not that the person asking me knew that) and I went to a meeting. Within two days I was in bed with a chest infection that felt as if my lungs were being squeezed shut. Two weeks of antibiotics helped me through it and it was close to Christmas before I felt well enough to go out again. I actually remember that experience more vividly than anything else — which is why when I got the first signs of winter two days ago, the cold, the damp and that tightness of the chest, I stopped!

I will miss the pop-up shop I have been helping Judy Sleeth in and blogged about, but I know the signs and the potential consequences of not slowing down. There will be things I still do, my lung and heart exercise group every Thursday morning, going to Jo in the Local Not Global Deli once a week, but now for brunch and Rosie Lea's on Wilkinson Avenue. I'll walk every day, I'll deliver for the Labour Party and the Civic Society, but I'll avoid crowded rooms and buses, the latter almost the thing I will miss most for the next 4-5 months.

At home I will still cook and go shopping with my trolley, write, draw maps, make bus boxes and watch Christmas films on Channel 5 (as I have done for past two years) if they do them again, even garden a little, not too much as I know the wildlife in our garden depends on it being untidy if they are to make it through the winter. In so many ways I am very lucky. I have Susan and close friends I love and with whom I will do things during my 'hibernation'. Perhaps the word is too dramatic, but it doesn't feel that way if you have spent all of your life being actively engaged with people.

Five days ago I was still in my spring and summer mode, enjoying autumn. Now I am in late-autumn / winter mode busy looking forward. 

Of one thing I am sure. It's good to be alive!

The coal face of life and life in the slow lane after open heart surgery.

It's six weeks to the the day since my last post on 23 February about my pre-open heart surgery visit to Nottingham City Hospital and how I was treated like royalty.

Well, I did have my op on Monday 27 February as planned and it is a case of so far so good. I can only describe the treatment and care I have received as faultless. I was in hospital for ten days and everyone, from the hospital cleaners and catering staff, to the nursing assistants, the nurses, the physios and the doctors were caring and supportive. I bonded with fellow patients and saw that not everyone shared my experience. Some, by their own admission, struggle to cope and place extra pressure on themselves and hospital staff. In such situations I noticed that it was some of the doctors who struggled to communicate. The cleaners and the nursing staff live closer to the coal face of life and continually worked at trying to make more anxious patients feel better.

The attention was relentless, from day one in the Intensive Care Unit after my operation, where I had one-to-one support, to the two days in the High Dependency ward, where I shared two nurses with another patient, then my eight days on the cardiac surgical ward, which had beds for 20 men and 4 women during my stay. I had my moments when the buzzers sounded and I found myself surrounded by staff being fitted with extra drips and other things I cannot remember with any certainty, but they all passed and the mantra of all staff was so true that I suspect I have been hard-wired with the words 'You will have good days and bad days' for the rest of my life.

The food passed muster with a little help from home and being directed by knowing fellow patients to the Afro-Caribbean, Halal and Kosher menus, and there was always vanilla ice cream! Most patients didn't wander far, sticking for the most part to their beds and bays. I was one of the wanderers, who used the dining room and a small sitting area to read and enjoy areas most patients said were 'cold', whereas I found the wards hot and stuffy.

I can honestly say that I have yet to suffer any pain or discomfort as a result of my operation, even when being fitted with drips or having tubes removed.

I found the whole experience amazing and overwhelming at the same time, but having reached nearly 73 without ever having an operation or a stay in hospital, it was a whole new world as far as I was concerned. Having a general anaesthetic was a whole new experience. There was no counting backwards, just chatting with the theatre staff is the last thing I remember, then hearing Susan's voice saying 'Hello Darling' and another lovely voice saying 'Hello, I'm Michelle'. Susan later told me it was another hour before I was really wake. Twelve hours of being nowhere. I have written a short piece about it, which I will place on my seniorfiction blog in ther next few days.

Probably what amazed me most was the fact that I met only two other men who were having planned open heart/by-pass surgery like myself. Everyone else had entered the system as an emergency, some having been in hospital since the new year and coming from as afar as Lincoln, Newark and Mansfield, whilst others were still in hospital weeks after their surgery for a variety of reasons. A few who had the op on the same day as me went out before me, but I did have the added problem of lung fibrosis.

Going home ten days after my op was great, but having been the subject of four hourly checks and a daily visit from doctors and nurses, who fine tuned my treatment and medication daily, to be suddenly on your own at home took some getting used to. Fortunately my GP practice (Derby Road Health Centre) picked me up and have been supporting me ever since and, as always, have been truly wonderful. I have en had visits at home from a NHS/British Heart Foundation community nurse and I have found her visits reassuring.

I have been at home now for four weeks and until Monday (this week) my worst problem has been night sweats. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they have now passed. The other big problem which hit me out of the blue was constipation, which I solved after three days with the help of a laxative bought from a Beeston chemist, but those three days were truly awful.

I have been pottering for the past two weeks, walking for a little longer each day and picking up on little chores around the house and having the odd few hours out. I've been to Staunton Harold for lunch and a walk last week, to Table 8 this week for lunch with a friend from Birmingham and yesterday I walked down Wollaton Road with a shopping basket and visit Hallams and sainsbury's before catching an L10 bus back up Wollaton Road.

I have been making bread for a couple of weeks now and helping with little chores, even cooking my favourite meal last Saturday — poached eggs on toast! Sometime this has left me tired because it is easy to forget how a string of little tasks ends up being comparable to one large task I would not even think about yet.

I have to pace myself and have still over two weeks to go before I return to the City Hospital for tests and an x-ray to see how well I am progressing. It will be May before my six week cardiac re-hab program begins — which is a good measure in itself of how long and slow open heart surgery recovery takes.  If I am lucky, I may get to play some lawn bowls in Broadgate Park this coming July and I may just manage to plant some runner beans.

In the meantime, I have some things I can begin doing on my computer and posting to this blog, so watch this space over coming days. Before I signed off in February I was a little pre-occupied with a dispute I had with Broxtowe Borough Council over being refused access to data about council tax exempt properties in the borough. I came home to fid this email on my computer:

I replied to Sue Rodden that there was no rush, as I was recovering from open heart surgery, but I have now asked for the data, so watch this space.

March really did pass me by. How I would have managed without Susan I do not know. Family and friends have been attentive and supportive and part of the process has been reassuring them as well as myself. Ordinary people are extraordinary and I could write a book about the people I met in the City Hospital during my ten day stay. So many wonderful people. A bit like Beeston, a real home from home.

I'm not sure how informative this blog post has been, but I am glad that I am here to write it!

Home-made maps, writing and a garden – 2017 looks good

2017 will be a big year for me. One of the biggest ever in fact. I'm seventy-two years old and counting. Open heart surgery promised by my surgeon for 'January' and my life depends on it, so that makes January pretty big in the order of things!

It's also odd finding out that you were born with a congenital heart condition and have managed to survive so long. Others with the same condition have been less lucky, whilst others live longer than me without knowing. In the order of things I am one lucky bunny!

Me aged 2 getting in the habit.

Had I not cut the grass in April 2015 at our new home in Beeston for the first time, I would not have found out that I had a condition known as fibrosis of the lungs (I did a post about finding out on 20 May 2015). My first visit to the City Hospital led to the doctor I saw asking me 'How long have you had a heart condition?' to which I replied 'What condition?' 

This set off a whole load of parallel tests and scans, which resulted in a visit to the Cardiology Unit at the City Hospital in August 2015 to be told that, at some point, I would need open heart surgery, but at first they would monitor me for six months, as I had no symptoms. I was walking as normal, pulling a loaded shopping trolley up Wollaton Road a couple of times a week. All this at the same time as my lungs were being monitored. My lungs were assessed as having '90% normal normalcy' and that has remained the case after another summer of tests and scans. 

My wonderful thoracic doctor decided I was OK for heart surgery and this led to another visit to Cardiology and another summer of scans (including 45 minutes in the large MRI scanner at the QMC during which I fell asleep twice) and procedures, during which they discovered that my aortic heart valve has two cusps instead of three (a condition I share with 1–2% of people), which has resulted in me being diagnosed with 'severe aortic stenosis'. It has now reached the point where I can no longer pull my shopping trolley when full and whilst I can still walk some distance on the flat, I can no longer manage hills without becoming breathless. I did think this was a symptom of my lung fibrosis, but the hospital told me it was my heart.

For some months now I have described myself as 'a half-day person', pacing how much I do. I tire easily and sleep a lot more, but on the plus side not a week passes by without lunch with friends, four of whom go back to my Wembley days, where I grew up, whilst others came into my life in the 1970s and 80s, then there's family and grown-up grandchildren. Lunch on Thursday (yesterday) with one of them, talking politics and history. Life doesn't get much better. I am surrounded by love and is yet another reason to consider myself one lucky bunny.

Topping it all is Susan, who came out of nowhere in 1975 to take my heart and life by storm. We took off like a rocket and were planning our future together within a couple of days.

The last eighteen months have made me think about life, and I have decided that my post-op world will be occupied by my maps, writing, gardening, delivering for the Labour Party, and friends. Family are a given  

I tell you all this because this blog will become a different beast from 1 January 2017. It will be home to my Beeston maps and related bus maps, plus a link to my writing. I really have enjoyed the blog, but life is moving on.

Happy with the me I am.

Robert Howard.